Early in the morning at Ryerson’s Ted Rogers School of Management, many lanyard bearing people sat in the seats, preferably as close to the front as possible, in a lecture hall patiently waiting. This weekend, the pupils in this hall were not learning to manage finances or business or anything of the like–rather they were learning to manage scripts. These were passionate screenwriters wanting to learn how to create scripts that would be accepted, and they came to hear from some of the best writers out there. While they came to write screenplays, I came to write an article, yet I didn’t benefit any less from the advice given. As a film fanatic, and someone who didn’t know too much about this event going in, I was just as engaged as everyone else despite having a different motive for being at the Toronto Screenwriting Conference of 2014.
I sat at the back to get a good view, since I noticed a large screen was above the stage, implying a video of sorts would be played. Before I knew it, I had to lower my eye sight a little bit as a roar of applause started; The first speaker walked onto the stage. It was Michael Arndt, the Academy Award winning writer of Little Miss Sunshine and the writer for the acclaimed Toy Story 3; The closing film of one of the best trilogies of all time. His entire speech was about the absolute hell he went through with writing the third Toy Story film. He appropriately began the presentation by asking if he could use inappropriate language; The audience cheered, so he began by saying “Writing Toy Story 3 was a complete fucking nightmare”. Arndt was audibly nervous as he would stutter and would lose his train of thought a lot, but he was still the best man to open the conference with as his drive for screenwriting made him easily the most engaging person of the day. He was humorous, self depreciating, honest and, most importantly, eye opening. His approach to throwing himself on the line of fire as a real person and not as a giftedly phony public speaker made him an even better speaker, if anything. We weren’t listening to a teacher or a politician: We were listening to a fellow film fanatic. His dark sense of humor echoed loudly and rang with the audience, as it would talking to someone you feel comfortable with and not with someone who is of a higher stature. Perhaps it is this uncanny ability to always be our equal that makes Arndt’s scripts so relatable.
Arndt discussed six chapters that he looks for in any well written script, as these are the sections any screenwriter should focus on perfecting: The introduction, the inciting incident, the first act break, the midpoint, the second act break, and the final climax. He discussed each point in detail by using a repetitive method for showcasing examples of each. He did this by showing very rare first drafts of Toy Story 3 that showed early versions of his story and why they wouldn’t work. He showed story board shots that only a handful of people outside of Pixar have seen, and he begged of us to not record any of these segments as Pixar were only barely accepting of him using these shots in the first place. He would then show a more updated, or even the final version, of these shots to give us an idea of how he fixed his script up. An example is the introduction of the movie, where the first draft had scratchy drawings of Woody and the other toys having a big discussion about their fate once Andy, their owner, goes to college. Pixar, according to Arndt, called this a discussion heavy mess. Arndt fixed this by not dishing out so much exposition and by insinuating that these are discussions the toys have had for years and have them speak by reactions and expressions, not by words. The final product was clearly a much better result, as were all of the final clips compared with their original counterparts.
Following Arndt’s day defining speech, we had a four person discussion conducted by agent of Meridian Artists, Glenn Cockburn. He led Canadian Broadcast Executives Tara Ellis (of Shaw Media), Nataline Rodrigues (of Rogers Media) and Trish Williams (of Bell Media) through a series of conversations about pilot episodes for television shows. They discussed their favorite pilot episodes of all time (which included Lost, Rookie Blue, The Good Wife and more), how these pilots worked well, and how they accepted and denied applications via the criteria these scripts had to meet. It was an interesting conversation, yet it felt personal with the people on stage as opposed to being personal with the audience. It didn’t fully engage us all of the time, yet it was still a very essential session that many diehard screenwriters could have taken a lot of inspiration from. There weren’t as many flashes or whistles from this talk, though. This was for the serious writer and not just a curious onlooker.
Following this lecture, as I am fairly under educated with video games, I went to hear a discussion of how difficult it is to write a script for these games, and my eyes were widely opened after this session. For an hour and a half I listened to Corey May and Darby McDevitt: A video game fan and a book worm respectively. These two men are the masterminds behind the intricate stories of the Assassin’s Creed games. Writing a story for a video game isn’t just hard, it’s a downright challenge. We were taught how these writers have to create two different stories within every game they make: The game that the game tells, and the game the player creates themselves. An example is with the popular Grand Theft Auto series. The story one of these games would tell is the one you watch when you complete missions and see cut scenes. The story the player would make is one where they commit crimes and see how long they can evade the police for whilst driving a damaged tank. These events have nothing to do with the built in story, and game writers have to account for this. In fact, game writers work on their scripts for the entire game making process, as so many departments within each game company will find collisions mid process. An example given was a plot point May and McDevitt created that takes place on a dock, yet with so many divisions (the art department, the special effects department, the map designer, and more), their plot point ended up being an obstacle because it now interfered with the position of this batch of trees that got placed there that day. Therefore, it is May and McDevitt that had to change the story around and now make it so the plot point happened in that area with the trees and not on a dock. I asked the both of them if they have played their own games outside of the office once the games were done, and if so, if they could enjoy the games through the stories they could tell as players and not as writers. They both found it difficult to play outside of the stories they created as writers since it is what they held dear to them for many years, and that it’s the game they played again and again during development. They couldn’t enjoy driving a ship around for ten hours for no reason, because they prefer taking part in the story the game tried to tell. Needless to say, it was a great discussion and one that opened the doors to video games to me (perhaps I will end up playing more games–if I had the time).
I ended the day off sitting in yet another lecture hall, waiting to see who would come on stage next. That’s when I heard NOW Magazine’s Norm Wilner, who conducted this final session, announce David Webb Peoples and Janet Peoples onto the stage. For those who don’t recognize these names, David Webb Peoples helped write Ridley Scott’s science fiction masterpiece Blade Runner, and also wrote Clint Eastwood’s dark Western thriller Unforgiven (of which he was nominated for an Academy Award). He and Janet Peoples both wrote Terry Gilliam’s remake of La Jatée known as 12 Monkeys. This superstar duo answered Wilner’s animated questions with years of experience, ounces of comfort, and the casualness of a hip teaching assistant. To be able to hear the zany experiences behind some of the best movies in history was unreal, and that’s because of how normal the meeting we witnessed went, despite the stories being full of calamity. We watched some of David Webb Peoples’ favorite clips from Blade Runner and Unforgiven and heard him go into context of how he reacted to each film; With a set of new eyes for Blade Runner (as a lot of the film was new to him) and with appreciation for Clint Eastwood (who used nearly every single line as was from the script of Unforgiven). When I told David Webb Peoples that Blade Runner was one of my all time favorite films, he responded by saying “Me too! Ridley Scott is a genius”. He simply was a man with so much modesty despite the gigantic film he took part in. It was a pleasant conference, and one full of fond memories and wisdom.
Overall, this first day of the Toronto Screenwriting Conference was a huge success and one that educated, uplifted and entertained me immensely. The guests left to the Jazz Bistro on Victoria Street for some drinks, discussions, and the chances to meet the speakers involved. As the night drew to a close, and I left full of glee and a bit inebriated, I found it harder than ever to write about this event, ironically one about tips on writing, because such an inspirational day was tough to put into words. As I have rested and have wrapped my head around what I had encountered, I finally managed to defeat this writer’s block in a way that perhaps Michael Arndt would be proud of; With my perspective switched. I didn’t just attend a conference. I didn’t just learn how to write a screenplay better. I learned how to command the plot points of my life better. I learned how to rewrite the paths I take in life much like the many attempts these screenwriters faced with their dearly written stories thrown back in their faces. I learned to keep doing what I love to do, because one day all will be resolved with a morally defined climax, wether we’d like to attribute Hollywoodized stories as the lives of our own or not.
